Sunday, 12 June 2016

In a letter to the Daily Telegraph the group said science should be "front and centre in the EU debate" as it was a key driver in health, innovation and economic growth."The EU contains a critical mass of expertise, with more than one in five of the world's researchers moving freely within its boundaries."EU decisions about scientific policy, funding and regulatory frameworks affect science the world over, and are influenced by British scientists. On the inside, Britain has access to people and funding and wields global scientific influence, far greater than we have alone."The signatories also include Sir Martin Evans, the chancellor of Cardiff University who was awarded for his work into stem cells, and Sir Andre Geim who won a Nobel prize for groundbreaking work on graphene, a material expected to revolutionise manufacturing.

Sir Andre Geim? He was born in Russia, and moved to this country from the Netherlands 10 years before the Free Movement Directive. He's living proof that you don't need a centralised bureaucracy managing free movement to get good scientists into the country.

This has just never been a problem. When Enrico Fermi got the hell out of Italy (his wife was a Jew) he walked straight into an academic job in the USA. Acorn computers (later ARM) was co-founded by Hermann Hauser from Austria, who had come to Britain to study a Phd at Cambridge, at a time when Austria wasn't even in the EU.

The letter comes as MPs urged ministers to draw up contingency plans to protect the UK's science sector in the event of a vote to leave the EU on 23 June.

The Commons Science and Technology Committee said the UK benefited "significantly" from access to EU research budgets and would have to seek other sources for funding if it was withdrawn.

We just stop paying the EU that money and give it to the scientists. Simples.

A spokesman for Vote Leave said: "The biggest myth in this campaign is that money that funds our universities, our farmers comes from a magical money tree in Brussels.

"There is no such thing as EU money - it is all paid for by British taxpayers as part of the three hundred and fifty million pounds sent to Brussels every week."
Quite.

I reckon it would be a good thing for 'science to get it' by whatever means. The dogma in science today is tending towards religious. I mean look at the big bang theory, or the 'belief' that the speed of light or gravity are constant. Curious. I'd vote whichever way caused science to 'get it'